![]() ![]() To show us how one girl imagines her debut in the school play might go, her bedroom transforms into a spotlight stage, her head adorned in a sophisticated wig, her shoulders draped in a cool costume as she bellows lines like she’s Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Finally, to exhibit how the girls feel empowered by yet afraid of their spurts of spellcasting, their cozy suburban setting transforms into a wild forest where magic would spark like the campfire of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Mya’s chest looks like a He-Man action figure, while Anna’s thighs are so ripped they could snap the head off a gym coach. They do so with each wearing one half of a foam muscle suit under their clothes. In a sequence where the girls feel empowered by a recent bout of workouts, they don’t just strut down the school hallway. ![]() Then, to emphasize how the girls feel, the show abandons realism for bursts of absurdity. In every setup, this visually sets them apart as misfits, while pairing them more fiercely together in their shared deviation. Most notably, co-creators/stars Erskine and Konkle are full-grown women playing 8th graders opposite actual children. However, what sets Pen15 apart from something like Eighth Grade or Lady Bird are the surreal elements woven into the storytelling. Season 2 captures these experiences so crisply that watching them is like time traveling back to when you too were painfully awkward. I could feel my shoulders tense in frustration. I could see the sparkle of that girl’s braces and the desperation in her eyes. I could smell the musty carpet of that basement. When the girls get into a savage fight with their mothers while thrift store shopping, I felt a pang of guilt that made me think I should probably call my mom. When the girls meet a new friend who spins implausible stories and offers the snacking perks of upper-class domesticity, she was so familiar I had the strange urge to check up on her on Facebook. Gathering in a cool basement den, we watched a VHS tape about ESP that we’d surreptitiously rented at a Family Video. Classmates I hadn’t thought about in decades floated to the surface, full names intact, quirks radiant and weird as ever.Īn episode in which the girls dabble in witchcraft plunged me back into that summer when a gaggle of girls and I created our own coven. While I watched, I was hit by wave after wave of memories. ![]() Season 2 leans even harder into the discomfort of adolescence, meaning the show is not laugh-out-loud funny as much as it is ruthlessly observational about our most ludicrous coming-of-age landmarks. Instead, it comes from the startling recognition of these moments in our own lives. The comedy of Pen15 comes not from laughing at our flustered heroines as they fumble desperately in their attempts to be cool. Season 2 shoves this daffy duo into the deep-end of awkwardness, from pool parties to sleepovers, school plays, and the requisite Wiccan phase. ![]() Season 1 saw besties Maya Ishii-Peters (Maya Erskine) and Anna Kone (Anna Konkle) taking on 7th grade with clumsy first kisses, bullying boys, and stumblings into self-love. Pen15 is back, offering a fresh parade of cringe-worthy flashbacks to the agony of adolescence in the 2000s. ![]()
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